Sex education for 4 year olds

[STEED]

This has to be the most disgustful thing to date to be suggested. In the name of common sense children should live like children and have a childhood. Stop forcing them to grow up fast which only results in a messed up child.

I hope this stupid idea gets thrown in the bin.

Give four-year-olds sex education, say charities

Two leading sexual health charities are calling for children as young as four to be given compulsory sex education.

Brook and the Family Planning Association (FPA) argue that teaching children about sex from a young age would help reduce abortion rates and sexually transmitted infections when they reach adolescence. The charities said children should be taught the names of body parts and about sex and relationships.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2289256,00.html

[sonar732]

Originally Posted by STEED

This has to be the most disgustful thing to date to be suggested. In the name of common sense children should live like children and have a childhood. Stop forcing them to grow up fast which only results in a messed up child.

I hope this stupid idea gets thrown in the bin.

As a father of 4 girls, I can't believe what I'm reading. My youngest is 5 years old and she mearly giggles when she sees her mom and I hug..."You're in love and married". I'd hate to see her innocence taken away for the 'future' possibility of STD and abortion teaching.

[XabbaRus]

Yep agree with that. Stupid baby boomer hippies here. My 6 year old thinks it is great when me and the wife hug..she goes around saying "you love each other" and that is the end of it....and when she has a bath with Max she thinks his willy is just something to grab hold of for a laugh...(Max is 2 now by the way)....

Saying that a friend of ours explained to her son who is the same age as my daughter where babies come from...(explaining the difference between men and wome). Anyway the upshot of that was hse explained how girls pee and then she said where babies come from..His response? "Can I see....." great!!!!!!

[Cohaagen]

Originally Posted by XabbaRus

Yep agree with that. Stupid baby boomer hippies here.

Most of those "stupid baby boomer hippies" are in their mid to late-60s now and retired. Perhaps the reactionary cranks will ponder the causes of social problems more deeply than the first thought that springs to mind, though it's doubtful.

These hand-wringing, teeth-gnashing "what is the world coming to???!!!!" threads are getting really tedious, though I suppose there's always a market for anxious shut-ins.

[Geno_Mariner]

I don't really think sex ed should be applied to younger children If they say it'd 'make them have safe sex when they're older', ya right, it depends on the individual. Some may have safe sex and some may not 'bout 13yo or so would be right.

I always asked mum (had no dad when I was in primary school) how babies are made. She never explained HOW, she just said 'it comes from the mummy's tummy' geeez, I was like 10 or older then. Read 'Where babies come from' but no sex diagram. In year 6, we had sex ed. That was when I learnt more about the gender 'bits' (and we were told not to show the diagram of the uterus to the boys. Stupid, if ya ask me. Of course, I 'accidentially' showed the diagram to a guy behind me, he was like OMFG.)
Eventually we had a look on 'Adam's Human Body' (a bloody good CD-ROM), that was when I first saw how babies are made. I didn't get it at first then at a closer look, that was when I realised how it happens. I was like But in year 7, it wasn't a huge deal anymore. Ain't emotionally scarred here either. But I wish my kid bro wouldn't wave his noodle around (thank god he doesn't do it in public) (Always avoided nappy change times lol).

[antikristuseke]

Sexual education at 4 is a few year too early in my opinion, but arround age 9-10 it would be right on the money. Concidering the age of sexual concent here is 14, which is too low in my opinion but oh well, starting sex ed any later would be a bit too late. Anyway, as some have pointed out, the basics of sex and where children come from should be tought by the parents, when they find it appropriate, but it doesnt hurt the children to allso learn about it in school.

I think my father explained where children come from and how they are made to me at the age of 6. His answer was quithe thurough so I said something similar to "ok" and then moved on to think about what i had just heard, figured it out, then went on to something else a 6 year old is expected to do.

[XabbaRus]

Originally Posted by Cohaagen

Most of those "stupid baby boomer hippies" are in their mid to late-60s now and retired. Perhaps the reactionary cranks will ponder the causes of social problems more deeply than the first thought that springs to mind, though it's doubtful.

These hand-wringing, teeth-gnashing "what is the world coming to???!!!!" threads are getting really tedious, though I suppose there's always a market for anxious shut-ins.

Do you have children? I do and if anyone teaches them about sex at that age it will be me. I don't disagree that something in the UK has to be done but I don't think teaching the kids at 4 will lower the number of teenage pregnancies.

You have to look at why teenage girls are having babies and most of the time from various programs I have read is that it is to do with self esteem and being loved unconditionally which is what a child does. Therefore it is a sociallogical problem and one that 4 year olds won't understand. At the moment my daughter just knows that a baby comes from mummy's tummy and am happy with that.

Also I think a lot has to do with sex and "adult relationships" at a young age being glamourised in various programmes on TV in the UK at least.

As for being reactionary and "what is the world coming to type of preson" far from it. I just think that these are extreme ideas being thrown out as a quick fix. I don't have the answers as a lot of people don't but maybe we should do is just teach them to say No.....

[STEED]

Originally Posted by XabbaRus

something in the UK has to be done but I don't think teaching the kids at 4 will lower the number of teenage pregnancies.

I know the answer to teenage pregnancies, stop paying them all those benefits under the sun and watch it fall like a stone.

[Skybird]

Boy I know why I left social and psychological science behind - too much crap-thinking there.

Health care charities, eh? Damn freaks - that's what I say. Has anybody considered to check out if maybe a pedophile interest organisation is behind this? No kidding, there are efforts from such deeply rotten organizations to lower the age for children having legal sex with adults to low one-digit ranges because "little kids have a right to experience tenderness" and "forbidding pedophiles to live out their gentle motivation and criminalising their interest and calling it perverse is a form of discrimination".

Both quotes are original quotes from a german TV documentation broadcasted maybe four years ago. I was so annoyed that I deeply engraved it in my memory.

But we certainly do not wish to discirminate somebody, don't we.

From a psychologist's perspective i must say the argument of that charity organisation is pseudo-intellectual excrement making mockery of every serious psychological theory of mental developement in children we have. Note that what they propose is someting totally different than kids in primitive tribes being risen in a climate of where being naked and relations between men and women are being experienced in a completely different situational context.

As a very close friend of a family with two girls, 3 and 6 years, I must say I feel that I really would like to have a silent little word in the cellar with those braindead charity workers, one by one.

Four years, good heaven. that is as disgusting like having 14 or 15 year olds lectured and drilled in military weapons handling. Bah.

[Sea Demon]

Originally Posted by sonar732

As a father of 4 girls, I can't believe what I'm reading. My youngest is 5 years old and she mearly giggles when she sees her mom and I hug..."You're in love and married". I'd hate to see her innocence taken away for the 'future' possibility of STD and abortion teaching.

I have a 5 year old boy, and a 1 year old girl. Raising my girl in this day and age with the so-called "non-judgemental" "lefty progressive" wacko's running around is going to be a challenge. If it were up to me, some of these "well-meaning" education "professionals" would be out of a job.

Of course we shouldn't be so judgemental, closed minded, and regressive as wanting our young girls to keep their innocence and be raised to be virtuous rather than like harlots. (Sarcasm off). Oh yeah, and we may be trampling on some liberal educators constitutional rights to "educate" if we as society decide they're not fit to educate. Society, and it's taxpayers, may not have the right to self govern and arbitrate, and determine eligibility requirements for it's institutions (of learning in this case).

[GSpector]

I am not to worried about the age a child is taught it by the Parents, as long as the Child knows that they can come to their Parents to ask questions and the Parents are willing and able to sit down and answer the tough questions. I would just prefer it's before they learn it in school.

At least if the kids know it before the schools teach it to them, that should be an easy class for the kids to pass.

Just leaving a book in the kids room sounds like it could work, but that may just start the questions

By the way Letum, that was the book my Neighbor read to me. She was like a Grand Mother to me and my Brother's anyway. I think I was about 8. My father just wanted to joke about it when I was 9 and I walked up to him and asked him about "The Bird's and the Bee's", just to see what he would say. I was very grateful for my neighbor. My father did try to teach me though a while later but his technique just gets into legal issues I won't bring up here. I'll just say, his method did not work for me.

[Safe-Keeper]

Reading comprehension skills, much?

Some time ago, the leader of a Norwegian day care center stated in a day care center magazine that kids should be allowed to explore their own and each others' bodies (which kids do, regardlessly of how gross you feel that sounds), and that you shouldn't yell at them if you caught them looking at each others' parts or touching each others.

What happened? Guess.

You guessed correctly. The news, even the non-tabloid papers, blew it up as "OMGWTF PEDOPHILE WANTS TEH SEX GAMES IN DAYKARE!1111", and it appears 80% of the people who read the papers were retarded enough to not question this outrageous statement and think a little for themselves (and with some reading comprehension, it would've been obvious what she was really saying).

The scary thing is that these "adults" are the same people who vote on serious issues - environment, war, homosexual marriage, the economy, and immigration, to mention a few, are all in the hands of people who very obviously can't analyze news. If that's not a scary thought, I don't know what is.

Same thing here, in a sense. The term "sex education" covers a lot of things. The article itself says

The charities said children should be taught the names of body parts and about sex and relationships.

Er, what? So basically, they're going to be told that a boy has a willy and a girl has a peehole, that you shouldn't touch other peoples' private parts if they don't want you to, and that when they grow up, they're going to have boyfriends and girlfriends and make kids. These are four-year olds. Do you really think they're going to go into great detail, more than perhaps "they lay down in bed and make kids, it's called 'having sex', and a kid starts to grow inside her, and nine months later it's born"? I don't think so:

Originally Posted by The article in the OP

Julie Bentley, chief executive of the FPA, said: "This is not about teaching four-year-olds how to have sex but teaching them about respecting themselves and others and giving them the confidence to ask questions when they get older and do want to find out more."It's like maths - at primary school children learn the basics so that they can understand more and more complex concepts at a later stage."

I strongly hope you show more critical skill when it comes to more important subjects.

Oh yeah, and we may be trampling on some liberal educators constitutional rights to "educate" if we as society decide they're not fit to educate.

As long as fundamentalists have the right to tell kids they that the theory of evolution is a lie, that abortion is evil, that gays must be persecuted, that condoms don't work and that atheists are evil...

...well, then if "the right" can ruin kids by turning them into raving fundies, we can "ruin" kids by telling them about tolerance and safe sex when they're ready for it. As long as fundie schools, up to and beyond the level of the place in Jesus Camp, are real... 2008-era public schools will be.

Freedom goes both ways.

From a psychologist's perspective i must say the argument of that charity organisation is pseudo-intellectual excrement making mockery of every serious psychological theory of mental development in children we have.

Does it now.

[Sea Demon]

Originally Posted by Safe-Keeper

...well, then if you can ruin kids by turning them into raving fundies, we can "ruin" kids by telling them about tolerance and safe sex when they're ready for it. As long as fundie schools, up to and beyond the level of the place in Jesus Camp, are real... 2008-era public schools will be.

Freedom goes both ways.

Who's footing the bill to the public schools? The taxpayers are. I think the taxpayers deserve a say in how they're run. If the voters decide they don't want this in their schools that they are funding, they have the freedom to determine that. Some government bureaucrat shouldn't be the final arbiter. Freedom is indeed a great thing. You might want to apply it properly however. The "fundie" schools as you call them do not teach the above, other than your few examples. And they are funded through private money. Not the taxpaying base, and have the freedom to determine their own curriculum. Of course you provide a movie that outlays a private group of individuals and assume every Christian/Catholic/Jewish school teaches the exact same thing. How biased and narrow of you.

[jeremy8529]

Well, im 16 here, I was raised different from most of you guys, I was taught there was no Santa Clause, and that children were made via sex, it was never a mystery to me, even before i started grade school. I knew how it happened, I just didn't understand why anyone would want to do that, right? I knew the name of all the organs and their functions , but I didn't understand why, just yet. So far life is good, im not scarred emotionaly or any other way. It was just the way I was raised I guese. I will make a big notice here, though, it wasn't the goverment that taught me, it was my parents and that does make a differnce. Just my 2 cents here. Kinda to give you guys a perspective from somone who was educated at a young age.

Although they plan on teaching at age 4, I think i was 5-6 ,but in this case I don't think that much of a age difference matters.

[Sea Demon]

Originally Posted by jeremy8529

Well, im 16 here, I was raised different from most of you guys, I was taught there was no Santa Clause, and that children were made via sex, it was never a mystery to me, even before i started grade school. I knew how it happened, I just didn't understand why anyone would want to do that, right? I knew the name of all the organs and their functions , but I didn't understand why, just yet. So far life is good, im not scarred emotionaly or any other way. It was just the way I was raised I guese. I will make a big notice here, though, it wasn't the goverment that taught me, it was my parents and that does make a differnce. Just my 2 cents here. Kinda to give you guys a perspective from somone who was educated at a young age.

Although they plan on teaching at age 4, I think i was 5-6 ,but in this case I don't think that much of a age difference matters.

Hi Jeremy. Very good thoughts you have. Me and my wife have taught my son already some things about different things he has asked about. We've believed in the honest approach. But I also believe that it is best taught by me and my wife. Not the public schools. I don't trust alot that's coming out of there these days unfortunately. And I definitely don't want a school to teach my kids the things I should be teaching them myself. I know it is a difficult subject to talk about sometimes. But that's the job of a parent. You sound like you're on the right track.